


Beautiful

by J_33



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Red Room, buckynat - Freeform, romanogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3723994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_33/pseuds/J_33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five times Natasha was called beautiful, and the one time she believed it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy:)

Being called beautiful would be considered a compliment to most people, but Natasha Romanov wasn’t most people. She didn’t know why she despised that word so much, but if she had to guess, she would think back to her past, and she would try to remember the things that she tried so desperately to forget, and the domino effect it had from there.

* * *

 

1. 

She was a rising star in the Black Widow program. At such a young age, everyone was amazed at her skill. She possessed a talent that took people years to achieve. Natalia was quick, and strong, and she had a fire behind her eyes that fueled her drive to win (to live).

 

The mentors at the Red Room, admired her from a distance during her lessons, whether it be in dance or the art of killing. Her ballet instructor, was the first one to pick up on her talent. She would tell those in higher positions, how graceful she was.

 

“Natalia is something special,” she would state.

 

She was special, but that could only last for so long. After being forced to fight one of her friends to the death, Natasha’s view changed drastically.

 

“We are nothing in this world,” she stated during her mandatory therapy session with Dr. List. “You just use us like tools, until you feel we are too rusted, and dull to go on, and then you throw us away, and not a single person weeps for the loss. We are everything until one day we are not, and then we are dead. How do you people sleep at night? Do you really expect us to believe that this horrific work is to Russia’s benefit? We are just flies in this web, and you are no different.”

 

“Well Natalia, I think that’s enough for today,” the doctor said. She was a frail looking woman, with round glasses, and pale skin. She looked like a normal person -- a good person, but Natasha knew otherwise.

 

That day came and went like every other day. It was at night, when Natasha was awoken abruptly that things started to change. Two guards unlocked her from the shackles that binded her to the small bed, and dragged her by the arms into the hallway. There, she saw Madame B waiting for her by a metal stretcher. Natasha’s heart dropped to her stomach, as she was forced onto the table.

 

“You have such a pretty face,” Madame B said to her, with the shake of her head. Natasha noticed how wrinkly the woman’s face was, and how faded her thin blond hair, up in a messy bun looked. She wondered if Madame B was ever a girl like her, forced into the same fate. She wondered if she was ever scared, and lost, and angry at the world too. She wondered if she even knew what she was doing was wrong?

 

Monsters create monsters, who only know pain, and how to make others feel it.

 

“You’re such a beautiful girl. Curly red hair, green eyes; such beauty gone to waste. You’ve always been too smart for your own good,” the older women stated. “But of course, that, like all things, can be fixed,” she finished, flashing a wicked smile, pushing Natasha’s face down onto the cold table.

 

When Natasha awoke hours later, she couldn’t remember what had happened. She could barely remember her own name. She looked in the mirror, and saw her face, a face that didn’t belong. She saw a stranger wearing a beautiful mask, in an ugly world.

 

And how she hated that beauty more than hate itself.

 

2.

When she first joined SHIELD not much changed regarding her views on beauty. To her knowledge, that word held no actual meaning. It all depended on opinion and perception, therefore, being beautiful was invalid; it was a joke.

 

Fortunately for her, the other workers at SHIELD feared her, so they had no time to call her beautiful, even if they secretly thought so. They were lucky to make eye contact with her, without immediately looking down or away.

 

 _It’s better to be feared then loved_ , Natasha thought. Love is just a recipe for disaster, love is a children’s book that goes missing. It always goes missing one way or the other.

 

For a while things were going alright. Sure the defection from the Red Room was hell, but it was worth it. Natasha almost felt free. Like the old days when her and her friend would escape the boundaries of the prison they called home, and watch the dancers from outside the window on a cold winter day.

 

She started to receive more privilege, with and with Clint’s help, she became a field agent. The first few missions, went by smoothly – well as smoothly as assassins work. But then Budapest happened.

 

The mission was supposed to be like any other, but this time something interfered. Clint was up in his perch somewhere, or whatever he called it, and Natasha was doing her job. Get the target alone, act helpless, kill target, evacuate, and leave no evidence behind. She knew the drill, and she always followed it, or at least she had.

 

The target, a middle aged German official, who thought it was okay to transport bombs across Europe to be used in situations of terror. Natasha was ordered to gain the information on the next shipment, and then take him out, how she accomplished that wasn’t important.

 

“Where do you keep the weapons?” she asked, while straddling him on the grungy hotel bed.

 

“By the docks,” the man stated.

 

Natasha trailed kisses up his neck, knowing that she didn’t have much time left before the guards found out he was missing. “Who were you planning on giving them to next?” she asked, while he moaned.

 

“You’re so beautiful,” he stated, and Natasha stopped dead in her tracks.

 

“What did you say?”

 

“You’re just so damn beautiful,” he repeated.

 

Natasha knew that the guards were on their way, and she could hear Clint in her ear telling her to get out of there, but she couldn’t leave just yet. Pulling the gun out that was strapped to her thigh, she pointed it at the man.

 

“What the hell?” he stammered in a panic.

 

“Am I beautiful now?” she asked, but before he could answer she pulled the trigger.

 

 _1, 2, 3_ times, she listened to the sound of the bullet leave the barrel of the gun.

 

Before she could react, four guards rushed in. She managed to shoot one of them in the leg, and another in the head, but before she could attack the others, they were on her. They threw her against the wall. She managed to duck, avoiding a punch, but was nailed in the ribs instead. Getting the upper hand, she tackled one of the guards through a glass table. She could feel the broken shards pierce her skin, but all she saw was red.

 

 _Is this what beauty looks like?_ She thought to herself as she snapped the remaining guard’s neck.

 

The way to the extraction point, she could feel Clint’s eyes on her. Natasha had a few broken ribs, busted lip, and was walking with a limp, but she couldn’t take it anymore. “Just say it already.”

 

“Say what?” he asked.

 

“That I didn’t follow protocol, and how I almost got us both killed, and how I’ll probably get suspended for this,” she said.

 

“I’m not going to tell Coulson, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he responded.

 

“Thanks,” Natasha replied.

 

“Don’t mention it.”

 

3.

At night she dreamed.

 

She dreamed of the sun, of running through fields of daffodils, smiling, under the heat of a summer day. She dreamed of her parent’s love, of dancing, and the crowd cheering her name. She dreamed of love.

 

At night she dreamed.

 

She dreamed of darkness, of the hard concrete that she trained on day after day until she could no longer move in the cold winter’s night. She dreamed of the approval from her mentors, of the blood that drenched her ledger, and of the fire that destroyed her hope. She dreamed of love too.

 

In her dreams there was a man, a few years older than herself. He had a metal arm that she had seen snap the necks of traitors. He used that very arm to brush her red hair out of her face, and hold her tight while everyone was asleep to avoid being caught – being punished. They called him the Winter Soldier, but to her, he was just a man who made her heart speed up a little each time their gazes meant.

 

He had long dark hair, and darker eyes that looked like they had seen war, but every time they looked at her, she saw a hint of a sparkle. Was it hope, or love? Of course not, they didn’t know how to love.

 

She dreamed of the locker room that they kissed in after a sparring session. What they were doing would be considered wrong, but to them, nothing had ever felt so right. Every moment spent with him almost made her forget the horrors she faced every day.

 

Natasha stood on her tiptoes, and brushed a strand of dark hair out of his face. “You make me feel human,” she whispered in Russian.

 

He kissed her red lips and said, “You’ve always been beautiful. They can never change that about you,” he whispered back.

 

And for a while she believed him, until they got caught, and he got put back into cryostasis, and turned back into a stranger. She told herself that it was bound to happen eventually, after all, their love was a ghost story, and ghosts always fade away into the night.

 

Natasha awoke with a scream in the back of her throat, her last thought of him shooting her through the gut while in a mission in Odessa. Sitting up in the bed, in the SHIELD issued apartment, she lifted up the hem of her undershirt to reveal a nasty scar that laced her lower stomach – a scar that represented more pain then a bullet could cause, and she told herself that beautiful people didn’t have ugly scars, and that the Winter Soldier was wrong.

 

He was gone now anyway.

 

4.

The Avengers Initiative was a not so terrible surprise like most things in her life. Yeah, the run in with the Hulk was something that would plague her thoughts days after the aliens that invaded New York came and went, and her conversation with Loki, the God of Lies, brought up the topic of her red ledger, she overall liked to consider the Avengers a success.

 

It wasn’t until she was watching the news, curled up on her couch, petting her the cat, Liho, she realized what being a part of the Avengers really meant, for her at least.

 

It meant that she was no longer a shadow. She was still a spy, but Natasha Romanov was no longer a secret, she was a bleeding wound full of truths and lies, and she wasn’t ready for the world to start dissecting her.

 

Anderson Cooper popped up on her television screen, and began talking about the aftermath of the Battle of New York. It wasn’t until he began talking about the Avengers that she started paying attention. He went on about each of their backgrounds, finishing with her. Most of it was nonsense, and the rest was whatever SHIELD gave them permission to use, but the last thing he said stuck with her.

 

“The Black Widow is both beautiful and deadly…”

 

Beautiful and deadly? Two complete opposite things used to describe herself, one of which was false. People looked at her and saw her features that the Red Room trained her to use to her advantage. They saw her perfect skin, and disregarded the gun on her hip. They marveled at the redness of her hair, and became blind to the redness of the blood everywhere else.

 

Natasha didn’t think she was beautiful because when she stared at herself she wasn’t pleased with what stared back at her, and she didn’t think she ever would be.

 

5.

When SHIELD had fallen, Natasha felt like a part of her life had been destroyed too. She had spent so many years developing her new and improve path of good around this corporation, and to uncover that it was all a lie, and she was really working for Hydra the whole time made her mouth taste like acid, and her stomach feel like rocks.

 

But of course she had to keep moving forwards (she had to keep surviving), because that’s what spies do best.

 

She took a break for a while, going to Paris and enjoying the view, and then traveling to a beach in Spain, though she didn’t wear a bikini. (Scars aren’t beautiful).

 

Natasha took pictures of the sunset, and the margaritas that she got at the bar, and sent them to Steve. She thought that if someone saw her enjoying herself then it would become real and maybe she wanted to talk to him again, but it didn’t really work that way.

 

She could only stay in one place for so long before she became restless, so after Spain, she went to Prague. While there she felt eyes following her, but she decided that she was just being paranoid. Walking into the town pub, she sat down on a stool at the bar, and ordered a beer, despite craving something much stronger. She sensed someone sit down next to her, and it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

 

“Still as beautiful as the day I first saw you,” said the voice of a man in a thick Russian accent.

 

“You’re supposed to be dead,” she said, turning to stare at the man she knew so long ago – Alexei Shostakov.

 

“Aren’t we all by now,” he said, and Natasha swore that she saw the same boy she once knew, but there was something different about him. Time changes people, for better or for worse, and this time it was for worse.

 

Natasha stayed silent, taking a sip of her scotch. “Are you here to kill me?” she asked.

 

“No, I’m here to bring you back. You have no more ties to SHIELD so why not join the KGB again, start something new,” Alexie said.

 

“You know why I can’t do that,” she started. “And I think already know what my answer is going to be.”

 

“Natalia--,” he began, but was interrupted.

 

“That’s not my name anymore,” she stated.

 

“You can pretend that you’re different from me, that you’re changed, that you’re even better, but I knew you before, and I know that there’s some things that will never change. You’ll always be a beautiful girl with an ugly past, and an urge to kill,” he said, raising his voice.

 

“I think it’s time for you to leave, Alexie,” she said taking another sip of her beer.

 

“You’re lucky my orders weren’t to kill you,” he said in an angered whisper, getting up from the stool.

 

“That makes two of us,” she said with a smirk.

 

“Goodbye _предатель_ ,” he said, before leaving the pub.

 

Natasha looked down at her hands, as what he said ran through her mind. _Goodbye traitor._ She took one last chug of her beer, and then ordered something stronger, something that could help her forget. Her beauty was a curse to those she used it against, including herself, and no amount of covers in the world could change that.

 

1+

She wasn’t quite sure how she went from being on the run to sleeping in Steve’s bed; it just sort of happened.

 

Natasha had come back to Washington, not expecting anyone to be inside when she crawled through his apartment window, but he had been there, sitting on the couch, watching some documentary about Presidents. And now, a few days later, she found herself curled up in his bed, wearing an old t-shirt of his that was triple her size, and she had never been happier.

 

“Do you ever wake up thinking that everything that has happened in the past few months was just a bad dream?” Steve asked, next to her in bed.

 

“I know the feeling,” she stated.

 

“There’s something a need to show you,” he said, getting up, and going to another room.

 

She sat up in bed, and when he came back, he brought with him a notebook of some sort. Sitting down next to her, he took a breath like he was preparing to say something important.

 

“When I woke up from the ice, it was hard to deal with everything that has changed in the last seventy years. I didn’t have much to do,” he said with a slight chuckle, “so I drew. I drew what I saw, what I missed, and what I dreamed, and then New York had happened, and I had finally felt some sort of purpose. Then we became partners, and everything started to look up, so I started to draw different things. I drew battles, and missions, and I drew you, but I could never seem to capture your strength and your heart at the same time, and do it justice,” he stopped, handing her the notebook.

 

She opened it, and after flipping through a few pages, her eyes landed on a drawing of herself. It was a charcoal drawing of her jumping off of his shield. There was fire all around, and debris, but she seemed to erase all of that chaos. Natasha ran her thumb across the edge of the canvas, and for the first time she thought that she looked beautiful.

 

She couldn’t find the right words to say, so instead, she leaned in and kissed him. It was different from the kiss they shared while running from SHIELD, because this one was real. “I love it,” she said, pulling back.

 

And maybe, just maybe, she found herself falling in love with him too.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and please leave any requests or reviews below!!!


End file.
